


promises to keep

by Chrome



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: c02e123 Fair-weather Faith, Friendship, Gen, One Shot, Post-Episode: c02e123 Fair-weather Faith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29200794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Dagen delivers a letter. Essek answers a distress call.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss & Dagen Underthorn, The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 18
Kudos: 115





	promises to keep

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Endless thanks are due to [ladyofrosefire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrosefire) and [Capitola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitola) for beta-reading and ensuring this fic makes a modicum of sense.
> 
> In the grand tradition of all my fics, I'm getting this up just in time to get jossed immediately.

Aside from missives from the Bright Queen, which were always brought to Essek’s attention immediately, the vast majority of mail that came into the research outpost was useless, or at least not urgent. The secretary knew better than to trouble him about it; he often missed her entrance entirely, buried in his work, and would look up in the afternoon to find the stack of mail on the side of the desk. Today she hovered in the doorway, uncertainly. 

"Shadowhand..."

"From the Queen?" he looked up.

"No..."

"Then leave it," he said impatiently, dropping his eyes back to the spell. Perhaps if he swapped out a material component—something about it wasn't catching...

"He has, uh," she cleared her throat nervously. "The messenger has insisted that he must deliver the letter directly."

"I'm not a messenger," a voice said. Essek lifted his head immediately—it wasn't a Dynasty accent. Uthodurnian, he placed after a moment. It belonged to a grizzled dwarf with a thick mane of black hair in an intricately made wheelchair. "I'm Dagen Underthorn. I'm a guide—bring people around these parts. Some, uh, friends of yours asked me to bring this to you." He held up a folded piece of paper.

"I see," Essek said. There were only one group of people who might have been accurately termed to be Essek's friends, and they  _ were  _ apparently in the area. "Please come in." He nodded to the secretary. "Thank you, you are dismissed."

She immediately nodded and left. Dagen rolled the chair up to the desk, looking around. It was a research outpost, and the decor was not fancy, but it was well-made, and all the shelves and tables were covered with Essek's work.

"Nice place," Dagen said.

Essek ignored this and held out his hand. "I assume the Mighty Nein asked you to bring this to me?"

"Yeah," he said. He put it in Essek's hand. "Strange folks."

"Mm," Essek said, not really agreeing so much as acknowledging that it had been said. 

The letter had his name on the outside. It was in Jester's writing.

Essek unfolded it and scanned the contents. He got three paragraphs in before he had to backtrack; he hadn't actually read a letter from Jester before, come to think of it—her writing had appeared on notes appended to baked goods or on sketches pinned up in their house in Rosohna, and he hadn't even quite realized he'd committed it to memory until he'd thought  _ ah, Jester wrote this _ when he saw his name. But the letter itself was undoubtedly from her—it had the same disjointed rambling quality as the Sendings he got from her, except without a word limit.

The contents were also, without exception, deeply alarming. His first thought was that he had to do research—surely the libraries of the Dynasty had more about this cult, the Nine Eyes—what could he remember about the Somnovum? They were a council in the Aeor that once was, but—and as he thought, he kept reading, and his throat tightened, and his heart was too loud in his chest, and when he'd finished and looked up at the dwarf still sitting in front of him in the chair he had to swallow several times before he could speak.

"When did you depart from her to deliver this?"

"Yesterday afternoon," he said. "Took a stop when it got too dark, finished the trip this morning."

Less than twenty-four hours, then. "And they were alright?"

"They'd just fought an ancient fucking dragon," Dagen said. "Don't know about alright but they and the other ones were all alive and together."

The other ones. Not friends, not judging by Jester's letter. And Jester was so quick to make friends, even among the sorts of people she shouldn't, even among people like Essek. If she could have befriended Essek, that she still called him a friend, and not these Tombtakers...

"How long would it take to get there?"

"Could get back by afternoon today if we left right now," he said. "They've probably gone on a bit, would have to track them down. Tomorrow at the latest without—." His gesture somehow alluded to dragons.

"Good," Essek said. "I will need half an hour. If you would like food while you wait, that can be arranged."

"Food would be good," Dagen said. "You want to go back there?"

"Yes," Essek said. "I need to get—some things." The Mighty Nein got into a lot of fights, Essek thought. He would need to be prepared for a fight.

"Look," Dagen said. "I don't mean to be rude, but I've seen some shit out there. Whatever they're messing around with, it's dangerous. And I've fulfilled the terms of my contract."

"Yes," Essek said. "Would you like a new contract?"

Dagen hesitated. "To do what? And when?"

"Bring me to the Mighty Nein," he said. "Now. Please."

"This is my job," Dagen said pointedly. "Not that I didn't like them, but I was getting paid."

Jester's handwriting was shaky on that letter. She'd used the phrase  _ we're so afraid.  _ "Whatever they paid you," Essek said, "I will double it."

"I'll take those terms," Dagen said, and held out a hand. Essek shook it.

Even before he let go, Essek’s mind was whirring with plans. “Do you have any dietary restrictions?”

“What now?” Dagen blinked.

“Anything you cannot or prefer not to eat,” Essek said. “I may add that to my knowledge our food is likely very similar to yours, if this is a concern.”

“I’m not one of those Empire folks,” Dagen said mildly, which was a nice way to say  _ I don’t think that drow eat human children, raw.  _ “And I’ll eat just about anything.”

Essek opened the door. “Marsae,” he said, and she appeared with remarkable speed. “Please,” and in the brief pause he sped backwards through his memory of the last few minutes to conjure the man’s last name, “Show Mr. Underthorn to the canteen. We will depart in half an hour,” he directed his last words to said man.

“Alright,” Dagen said.

“Right this way,” Marsae said.

“Thank you kindly,” said Dagen, and then their voices faded as they disappeared down the hall.

Essek surveyed the office first. Most of his work here was experimental, not the sort of thing he planned to rely on in a tricky situation, and it was a simple matter to gather it up and lock all the papers in the desk drawers. The materials he needed—paper, ink—were kept aside, his spellbook returned to its pocket dimension, and after a moment’s hesitation he retrieved his personal copy of the Dynasty’s most complete mapping of Aeor. It was the sort of thing he’d have to answer a lot of questions about if anyone else knew he was planning to show it to people outside of the project, but Essek wasn’t planning to ask permission.

Next, components. He had two sets, one which lived permanently in the specially made pouch sewn into his cloak, which remained in his quarters—he hadn’t intended to go out into the snow today. The second set was in a shadowbox-style drawer in the desk, and he opened it up and skimmed along the rows, pulling out anything he might want more than one of. He added those to his stack of papers.

He shut the drawer, locked it, and went to the bottommost drawer and unlocked that. It had the appearance of being reserved for refuse, a haphazard collection of anything that didn’t have an appropriate place. There was a faded old cloak, an empty ink bottle, a pen with a broken nib, a few bundles of papers with nothing useful written on them. But at the bottom was a box, and Essek opened the box and removed the cotton, palmed the glittering diamond that sat below it, and shut and locked the drawer again.

That was all he needed from here. He picked up the materials he’d set aside, put out the candles with a flick of his wrist, and stepped out, locking the office behind him so that everything was under two layers of security. Essek was not a paranoid man; he had good reason to want his life to be private.

Next, his quarters. He packed swiftly, starting with the necessities for travel in Aeor, thankful that he’d been out on research expeditions before. He might not have been accustomed to adventuring in the way the Mighty Nein were, but at least he knew what supplies he’d need. He stripped and redressed, putting on the layers he’d need for traveling through the snow in the place of the clothes meant for the indoors.

Foolishly, sentimentally, Essek had thought about traveling with the Mighty Nein before. Only a passing fancy; he had known better to expect it, of course, and he would never have admitted to the thought to anyone else. But he had thought through what it might be like, the practicalities of it, quietly inventing a solution to each sticking point in the daydream.

Perhaps it hadn’t been so passing a thought after all, but the pleasant result was that Essek had already done all the planning that might have delayed their departure. He added the spell components from the office to his pouch, the diamond among them; he layered on jacket and scarf beneath the coat. The spellbook could be retrieved in a moment, the components accessed easily as well. If there was to be a fight, he was prepared.

Socks, layered. Boots. Gloves last, since they limited his dexterity. He swung the pack over his shoulders and went downstairs to find Dagen.

There were few people in the canteen at this time of day, past breakfast and still well before the midday meal. As such, it was impossible to tell whether Dagen’s distance from the few Kryn personnel was engineered or coincidence.

It did not matter. Essek did not care what this man thought of him, except to the degree that it was necessary for him to bring them to the Nein. That the thought had crossed his mind was nothing but idle curiosity.

When Essek entered, Dagen shoved his chair back. “Should I,” he made a vague gesture at the empty plate before him.

“Leave it,” said Essek.

Dagen shrugged. “Lead on.”

Essek took the most direct route out of the canteen, down the hall, and towards the front door. No one would question Essek’s departure—day trips out to marked and guarded sites weren’t unheard of, although he doubted that they would have expected him to risk entering Aeor proper on his own.

Not that he was doing that. That was simply the most risky of all possible options, which meant there was a fair chance that the Nein were doing it, and Essek...

…well, he hadn’t admitted it to himself prior to the last moment, but if the Nein were doing it, then Essek was too.

When they reached the door, Dagen stopped a few feet back. “Don’t take this as an insult,” he began.

“Then do not let it be an insult,” Essek said, coldly.

“I take half pay up front,” Dagen said, after a pause.

Essek did not take that as an insult. It seemed like a sensible policy. He swiftly retrieved the sack of coins and handed it to Dagen. “Two hundred platinum, and I will give you the rest on our arrival,” he said. “You may count it if you like, but I ask that you do so quickly. We are losing daylight.”

“You’re not hiring me to bring you back?” Dagen raised his eyebrows. Even as he spoke, he opened up the pouch and withdrew a platinum piece, turning it in the light to check it for authenticity. Apparently satisfied, he added it back to the pouch and weighed it in his hand.

“Do you think that’s likely?” Essek said.

“I have no goddamn idea,” Dagen admitted. “Coin’s good. Let’s go.”

They departed out into the snow. They hadn’t gone much beyond the gates before Essek weighed the use of a spell versus the speed at which he was likely to attain sinking into the snow every few steps, and floated above it. They made good time while the sun was still climbing; Dagen moved very swiftly over the snow.

It did take him an hour or so to notice exactly why Essek was making such good time, though, a realization that Essek—thinking more about Jester’s letter than paying attention to his guide—missed until Dagen spoke.

“So,” Dagen said. “Is that a—necessary thing, or are you tryin to impress me?”

Essek glanced over, and then down at his feet floating over the snow’s surface. He couldn’t quite control his expression, and by Dagen’s responding one he thought that he’d accidentally made his initial thought of  _ why would I want to impress you? _ quite clear.

“It is a matter of some convenience,” Essek said, shortly.

“How so?” Dagen asked. “I was under the impression magic had a price.”

Essek crushed the annoyance that bubbled up in his chest forcefully. It was easy enough to feign, if not actually demonstrate, politeness when excusing yourself for important matters back home. It was even possible in the research post, although only achievable by strategically splitting up books for excuses to go to his room or his office or some other place as convenient for avoiding people. But telling Dagen he was busy would be explicitly saying  _ I find most people very tiresome, and you are no exception, and please let me associate with my own thoughts only while we hike through this godsforsaken wasteland. _

“It does,” Essek said as diplomatically as he could manage. The Mighty Nein had trusted the man enough to guide them into Aeor, and then to get Essek, with a letter that they hadn’t even bothered to seal. “In this case, a negligible one for its benefit.”

“That your feet don’t get cold?” Dagen said, not quite derisively but with the implication of it. Essek briefly considered disregarding the Mighty Nein’s theoretical good opinion and being as rude as he liked.

“I am not slowed by the snow, and I leave no footprints,” Essek said frankly. “And it  _ is _ less cold than putting your feet in it, which I hesitate to point out you are also not doing.”

“You don’t hesitate about much,” Dagen said, but he sounded impressed, so perhaps Essek hadn’t been crushingly rude after all. Or Dagen was the sort who respected crushingly rude people, in which case he and Essek might just manage to get along.

More promising was the fact that Dagen left off on the questions after that, and the day was spent largely in silence, except when Dagen had to direct them somewhere else. Snow had fallen since the journey, but Dagen seemed to find ways to track them that weren’t reliant on finding a distinctive trail. Sometimes, Essek had no idea what had tipped him off, but once he saw a tuft of wool on a bare, withered thornbush and even a fool couldn’t have missed the dragon’s blood against the snow, frozen into burgundy crystals that jutted above the sea of white by a blast of dragon’s breath.

In the mid-afternoon, they reached a spot, and Dagen stopped.

“Well,” he said. “They made it here, but I don’t see much else.”

“I don’t see evidence of a fight,” Essek said tersely, although he was aware that didn’t mean much coming from him.

But Dagen nodded. “Probably stopped here for the night,” he said. “I’d guess they got on from here, though, so don’t know if you’d be able to find that…” he waved a hand. “Magical tower thing.”

Years as the Shadowhand required a good poker face when it came to unexpected information, and Essek made no reaction to this revelation about Caleb’s latest ability.

“If they moved on, I could not,” Essek agreed, but he cast Detect Magic anyway. “Nothing anymore.”

“Hmm,” Dagen said. “Well, we could,” he scuffed at the snow with the end of his axe, then paused. “I’ll admit I don’t know what creature that might be from.”

“What?” Essek leaned down and retrieved it for Dagen. It was a blue feather, trapped in a clump of ice.

“Odd color,” Dagen said.

“Jester,” Essek said. “They flew from here.”

“Well, now,” Dagen said. “Now I know what to look for.”

True to his word, he led them across the landscape on the trail of giant birds after that. While footprints vanished once filled with snow, feathers could always be unearthed later, and Dagen was an expert. As the sun continued across the sky, the temperature dropping even though it barely felt it had warmed at all over the course of the day, Dagen stopped suddenly.

“What?” Essek asked, and then he instantly knew ‘what’. The area, like the spot where they fought the dragon, was heavy with the evidence of a battle. There was blood, lots of it, heavy and frozen, and deep gouges in the iced-over earth. Essek spotted crossbow bolts dotting the earth, and everywhere, the residue of heavy magic.

“Some kinda fight,” Dagen said. “Someone fled that way, though.” He bent down. “That can’t be—huh.”

“Some impossible animal?” Essek asked, politely.

“Yeah,” Dagen said. “How’d you—“

“Polymorph,” he said. “If it’s blue, it was Jester.”

“Nah,” he said. “Some kind of mammoth, though.”

“That could still be Jester,” Essek said.

“Other people went that way,” he pointed. “Those—cult people.”

“The Tombtakers,” Essek said, his mind automatically supplying the name from Jester’s letter. 

Those strange cultists, one with the form of their former friend, all of them marked by some forbidden magic. He had a momentary itch to follow, to learn more. Would the Nein be grateful for that? If he could unravel the puzzle for them? Essek was good at unraveling things.

But—no. If the fight had not ended decisively, then he knew better than to fight something that had bested the Nein. He had some confidence in his ability to win a fight with any one of them, one-on-one, if adequately prepared. He was not confident in his ability to beat two, fighting together; that this group had sent the whole of them running was the surest sign that Essek should not pick a fight alone.

The second-surest sign; the surest was that Jester had said they were afraid.

At least there were no bodies. Essek hoped that most of the frozen blood was the Tombtakers’, although it was impossible to even know the volume.

“Which way did the Nein go?” he asked.

Dagen pointed. “That a way.”

“Lead on,” said Essek.

It got easier from there. There were more feathers, mammoth tracks, mammoth fur, footprints and blood. The feathers were blue—Jester had still been a bird, so someone else had been the mammoth. There were footprints, eventually, that Dagen said were Yasha’s. There was more blood. Essek had to resist snapping whenever Dagen slowed to examine something, or took long minutes to find a trail.

As they walked, the sun dropped further and further in the sky. Eventually, Dagen slowed. “It might be time to set up camp,” he said.

“I can see in the dark,” Essek said. “Or make light for you, should you need it. And neither of us is in danger of tripping.”

“Well,” Dagen said, after a moment. “I guess that’s true.”

So they went on, in the dark. Essek cast the glowing orbs that Caleb was so fond of, when it truly did become too shadowed for the dwarf to see, and they kept moving.

For all his stubbornness, Essek was beginning to doubt when suddenly Dagen raised a hand. Without being asked, Essek doused the light.

“I can cast the dome,” Caleb’s voice came from further on in the darkness. “But you know he can dispel it like,” they weren’t standing close enough to hear him snap his fingers.

Essek shifted slowly towards them, taking advantage of his dark vision, but even when he got their forms into view, he couldn’t tell who was injured. They all seemed to be accounted for, and all back in human form; there was Caleb, standing in the center; there was Veth at his side. Caduceus, standing sentinel—

“Something’s there,” Caduceus said. “Eyes up.”

“Fuck,” Beau snarled, and oh, she was the injured one, or at least one of them—she moved stiffly and there was blood smeared on her face. She brought her fists up regardless.

“You do not need to hit anything,” Essek said. “And quite honestly I would prefer it if you did not.” Carefully, he stepped forward into view.

There was a moment’s pause.

“Assumed you’d be alright if we tracked you down,” Dagen added. Essek managed not to flinch—he hadn’t even heard the man come up behind him.

“Essek!” Jester cried, and she launched herself at him.

Jester had twenty or thirty pounds on Essek and was made of solid muscle; he had the foresight to drop the floating spell and plant his feet. That and a great deal of luck kept her from bowling him over.

“Hello, Jester,” he said. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

She sniffled into his coat. “Did you get my letter? I guess you got my letter.”

“I did,” Essek said. “I must confess I—am not entirely sure what is going on, but I look forward to lending my aid in whatever way I can.”

“You’re going to help us stop them?” Jester checked.

“Yes,” Essek said.

“Why?” Beau cut in. “What’s your game?”

“No game,” Essek said. “To be quite honest, I’m not sure what you’re doing here, aside from what Jester wrote in her letter.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I hope,” Essek said, “If I am quite honest, to not stumble across a pool of your blood in the snow again.” It had been a guess, but she reacted, which confirmed that at least some of the blood had been Beauregard’s.

The vehemence of his own words surprised him, and he tried to cover by pulling back from Jester, but she tightened her grip instead.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said. “You can meditate instead of sleep, right? Only we probably need to keep watch.” She let go and stepped back finally, frowning.

“We do not have any spells,” Caleb said briefly to Dagen, as though in explanation. “While I could certainly hide the entrance to the tower, I cannot cast it. And the dome is harder to conceal—although I can cast it for the warmth, there is not much space…”

“Allow me,” said Essek. “I confess I doubt it will have your flair, Caleb.” He reached into the pocket dimension and pulled out the spellbook, which he settled in his left hand, and then a pink umbrella, which he gripped in his right.

Jester blinked, and then gasped. “You kept it!”

“It is not a bad talisman,” he said, settling it against a mostly clear patch of snow.

It was the sort of spell that took quite a bit of planning to cast with the finesse that he was about to demonstrate. He momentarily considered not doing it—considered conjuring a reflection of his own home, or an impersonal sort of hotel. But it seemed a shame to let all his daydreaming truly be nothing more than itself, and with any luck, only Caleb would guess the hours that would have to have gone into it.

But perhaps the impersonal would be safer. He cast a look around at them; Beau with her wounds and blood on her face, Caduceus bloodied too, Caleb’s face pale and exhausted, the tears freezing on Jester’s cheeks, Fjord watching her worriedly, Veth with all the hair coming out of her braids. It felt—petty, and foolish, and small, to make them stay in a place that was not made for them.

There was no shame in this, he told himself. No shame in feeling something for these people. Someday he might believe it. Until then, he would rely on this strange, burning ache in his chest to overcome it.

“The door will not be visible to anyone besides ourselves,” Essek said briskly, and he let the outline of a door burn itself from the tip of the umbrella onto the snow.

“Do you have a tower like Caleb’s?” Jester demanded.

“I have not seen Caleb’s. And I confess that mine has seen—very little use,” Essek said, which was true if he meant the spell in general, and an understatement if he meant the configuration he’d conjured now. “But it seems as though we may have a lot to say to each other, and you could use the rest.”

“We could,” Caduceus agreed. “Thank you, Essek. The Wildmother said we could trust you.”

Essek hadn’t come up with a response to that before Jester darted forward and hugged him again. “Thank you, Essek,” she said.

“I am glad that you wrote to me,” Essek said. He looked from Jester to the others, his gaze lingering on Caleb and Beau the longest, aware of their doubt.

“This will do you no good, getting mixed up in this,” Caleb warned.

Essek shrugged. “I am not much in the habit of doing good,” he said. “For myself, or anyone. It seems time to change that.”

“We won’t say no to the help,” Yasha said.

“I’m cold,” Veth said. “You gonna let us in?”

Essek pulled the door wide. “Be my guest.”

“Thank you for allowing us into your home,” Caduceus said.

Essek shook his head. “It was not a home.” A convenience. An experiment. But not a home. To be a home, you needed—something.

Something more.

Something that might look like this, he thought, hearing Jester gasp in wonder as she disappeared through. Fjord was right behind her, and Caduceus right behind Fjord. Beau, then Jester, then Veth, then Dagen, leaving him and Caleb standing in the show.

“You are staying with us?” Caleb asked, and Essek somehow knew Caleb didn’t mean here in the mansion, tonight.

“If you don’t mind it,” Essek said.

“I don’t mind it,” Caleb said, quietly, and they stepped through the doorway together.

**Author's Note:**

> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


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